Life — August 22, 1912 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

To every man a harp, and to every man a crown! To every man a mandate for to turn things upside down, And harp on any string he will his crown himself, And all the other bosses for to lay upon the shelf! d wear and a ny Oh, a pocket full of mor wallet full of bills, To cure the world of poverty, a folks of all their ills! Don't you hear the Bull Moose call- ing, don’t you sce the people run “Come unto Me! Come unto ME! Millennium’s begun!” HA’ in the rough, is Mr. Roosevelt's ad= dress at Chicago. An engaging address! The Times calls it == “the best, the ablest, the most persuasiveof I his public utterances,” and concedes its sincerity, and that through it “ rings the firm tone of conviction.” “It is so grand—so grand,” said Jane Addams “It contained all the things Ihave been fighting for for more than a decade; a minimum wage, old age pensions, child labor, equal suffrage, protection of women in industries, and all the other things I have devoted my life to working for.” Yes, it is an en- gaging address, and if Brother Debs should feel that it has borrowed too much of his thunder, and if the Times, which admires it as a document, points. out that it “outlines a vast system of State socialism, a government of men unrestrained by laws,” those will only seem objections to persons who object to them, Probably Miss Addams would not object. Her support of the Bull Mouse programme is much respected and carries weight. We suppose her mind has never dwelt very much on the expedient limitations of govern- mental supervision of human affairs, or on the consequences in the long run when they are exceeded. If a pro- gramme that, on the face of it, prom- ises to better the lives of worki women in Chicago, looks good to her, we must respect her approval of it as as it goes. Probably the facts of life as she has seen them have left her luke warm, at most, in her disapproval of socialista, and she accepts Mr. Roosevelt’s bountiful offer without much scrutiny either of its implications or of its guarantees, And so it seems to be with most of the rest of the Bull Moosers. Their hopes and their desires are admirable. They love the Cclonel’s rainbow, and put their hands trustfully in his to be led to find the bags of pure gold which are certainiy waiting at the points where it hits the carth. Bless their good hearts! They seem’ the child- likest lot of citizens ever assembled to nominate a President, but by no means on that account to be garded, disre- LL for the country if it had nothing else to offer to offset the Colonel's rainbow but Mr, Taft's letter of ac- ceptance. There were excellent pas- sages in that letter; plenty of true and umely things compressed into effective paragraphs. It includes a record of things done in Mr. Taft's administra- tion which will be useful for reference in this campaign, and a philosophical discussion of the hopes and doctrines of the more extreme contemporary als, which is good reading and m, sound sense. But it is weak in its mouldy declaration that the Re- publican party (old style) is the only one to which the Government can safely be intrusted, and in the evidence that it gives, quite needlessly, that the gift of seeing the tariff as it is has not been very bountifully conferred on Mr. Taft. There is not very much for Miss Jane Addams and her kind on the sur- face, at least, of Mr. Taft's piece. VOL. LX. AUGUST 22, 1912 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J. A. Mito, Pres't. A. Minten, See’y and Treas 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York Vanglish Offices, Canon House, Breams Bidgs., London, 1.C. No, 1536 Not so with Dr, Wilson's discourse accepting the Democratic nominati ‘That is a craft that will take nobody's wash; a document from which no hungry mind comes away empty Written, we suppose, without knowl- edge of Mr. Roosevelt’s manifesto, it is still the answer to Mr. Roosevelt, as it is, in some points, to Mr. Taft. It’s eat merit is in its spirit; in its com- prehension of what is; in the con- structive purpose it discloses to bring to pass what ought to be with the least possible damage to anything of valuc that exists, “Plainly,” says the Gov- ernor, “it is.a new age. 2. . Our difficulty is not that wicked and design- ing men have plotted against us, but that our common affairs have been determined on too narrow a view, and by too private an initiative. Our task now is to effect a great readjustment and get the forces of the whole people once more into play. MWe need no revolution; we need no excited change ; we need only a new point of view and a new method and spirit of counsel.” No Armageddon, then, in Dr. Wil- son’s invitation! And yet it is an in- vitation to some very definite accom- plishments. As to the tariff, for example, which he says “has become a system of favors which the phrascol- ogy of the schedule was often de- liberately contrived to conceal,” he speaks with excellent practical theoretical sense when he says: and We do not ignore the fact that the business of the country has been built up, however ill-advisedly, upon taritt schedules, and its foundations must not be too radically or too suddenly dis- turbed, When we act we should act with caution and prudence, like men who know what they are about, and not like those in love with a theory. But we shall not on that account act with timid- ity, as if we did not know our own minds, for we are certain of our grou and of our obj; There should be immediate revision, and it should be downward, unhesitatingly and steadily downward. It should begin with the schedules which have been most obvious- ly used to kill competiti 3 prices in the United States, arbitrarily comicbook